Payneful Memories
by Xlator
Summary: A fan fiction in first person about Max Payne's sister Sadie, based on the works of Alena Jamie Aberdeen. Prologue and first chapter up
1. Prologue

Max Payne is a trademark of Remedy Entertainment Ltd. / Take2 Interactive. Sadie Payne is the intellectual property of the user Alena Jamie Aberdeen here on FanFiction.net  
  
About: This piece of fan fiction is based upon the works of Alena Jamie Aberdeen. It is told in the first-person by Sadie Payne, younger sister of the tough talking New York DEA Agent Max Payne. The main premise is that Max was killed atop Aesir Plaza, as told in the story The Last Pain. Please, read and review this story and Alena Jamie Aberdeen's stories. This is just an attempt at a first-person rework.  
  
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Prologue  
  
She was dead. My mind knew it, but my trigger finger didn't. I emptied my clip into her, each bullet whistling through the sterile office air. It was sweet music to my frost bitten ears. It was like the bitch had control of the weather, for the icy storm raging on the other side of the bullet-proof glass was just as treacherous as the one Max faced that night. The night my life was turned upside down... Turned upside down would be an understatement, the understatement to end all understatements.  
  
I stared blankly at the bloodied corpse of Nicole Horne. She was dead alright. I didn't know if I cared yet, my thoughts were raging at a mile a minute. The only hint of guilt I felt was for the wretched V-head who had eaten Vincenzo Punchinello's hot lead as he charged in his cold-turkey induced frenzy, gun in hand but shaking too hard to be able to hit the side of a barn. He needed his V-fix like a fish needs water, but what posessed him to take it to the big guns, I will never know. I could've saved that poor creature, but instead he became a human shield, a barrier of flesh and bone between my sleek, tightly clothed body and the barrel of Punchinello's well-polished 12 gauge. The lingering stain on the right leg of my pants served as a messy reminder of my near demise. I was able, thanks to the unwitting heroics of one intellectual challenged and raging psychotic hyper- junkie, to burst the Don's bubble with a surgically accurate shot to his left temple, sending blood squirting out like congealed Tomato Soup.  
  
To think I owed my life to the type of person I was brought up to avoid should I see him in the street. Damn, I used to be such a good girl.  
  
But now the battle against V was finally won, and I was the First Lady of the Russian Mafia. To Russia with Love. So much for the pre-teen dreams of college, a nursing job and a house in the suburbs! I was the All-American Girl, sticking out like a sore thumb amongst the sweaty, heavy bearded Ruskijs. And yet, for the first time since... well, ever, I fitted in.  
  
Now that I finally had time to get philosophical, I kind of overdid it, my trail of half-neurotic thoughts rough and rapid like the runaway train in some low-budget Spaghetti Western. I couldn't think straight. Had to clear my mind somehow. The coffee machine in the corner of Hornes office glowed invitingly, and I limped towards it, shiny new quarter in hand. It looked almost unused, making me think that Horne stayed high on Valkyr. The wrinkled face of the Ice Queen lying on the floor casted evil stares at me. She was easily as menacing dead as alive. I sipped the hot coffee, definitely the weakest triple espresso in history, the taste reminiscent of diluted tea. Diluted with blood, perhaps. It was revolting. No wonder the machine hadn't been in use much. I walked over to the one woman freakshow on the floor, her clothing the same sickly green color as the poison she had been feeding the American populace for the past five years. I stared at her mockingly as I poured the scalding hot coffee over her with a fiendish expression on my face. I watched it burn her wrinkled skin as if it were acid. "Smile for the camera" I growled under my breath.  
  
Wow, there I was, talking to a corpse. I only hoped Max was watching me from his one-room condo in the sky. And that Mom and Dad were not.  
  
With a tired sigh of indifference I stepped into the glass elevator and tapped the button for the ground floor. The journey seemed to take forever, and the elevator music almost sent me off to sleep. When you've been up slaughtering mobsters for 72 hours, even the horn of a 12 tonne truck is a welcome lullaby.  
  
I could almost see the headlines as I hauled myself behind the wheel of my ride. My work here was done, and for the first time in 6 years, I could look forward to a good nights sleep. I blew town and returned to the motel just north of NYC where I had stayed the week before. This was gonna be a hell of a dream. 


	2. Chapter 1: The American Pipedream

Chapter 1 - The American Pipedream  
  
To understand just how far I had come, I had to do a little mental time travel, dial set to the harshest winter in New Yorks history.  
  
Back then, I was living in a small, idealistic community 3 hours upstate from the Apple. Crime figures were next to nothing, kids could play safely in the streets outside their homes, and the most influential organisation in town was the church. This little wannabe-Utopia was the stuff pipedreams were made of. Unaware of global terrorism, organized crime and drug trafficking, there it was, the Garden of Eden minus serpents and forbidden fruit, well shielded from the veritable Sodom and Gomorra of the outside world.  
  
From the first moment I knew what was going on, I hated it. I knew I didn't fit in, that I wasn't made of the same lily-white fabric as every other picture-perfect servant of God, their sickly smiles forever reminding me that I was surrounded by brainwashed, unthinking glove puppets, like every baby in town was lobotomised at birth. I was positive that somewhere behind it all was some clinically insane control freak, some perfectionist playing at God. I never dared allay my little conspiracy theory to anyone, after all, who would have taken it seriously in this paradise in disguise. It was hell on earth, a concentration camp in a tux.  
  
I don't know how I managed to keep my disguise for so long. When people looked at me they saw no difference to any of the other spoilt little brats with crazy illusions of grandeur, wanting to be just like their perfect parents. It was all an act, and for twelve years, I was star of my own show.  
  
My parents were the conformist type, which must have been their reason for moving there, but even they were out of their league in this place. And even though they never knew of my grim hate for the place, they somehow kept me sane, and even happy, because I knew that every day, after seeing the oceans of smiling faces mocking every fault of humanity, I could experience a piece of the real world, the occasional raised voice and hurt feeling, anger and sadness, the human imperfections that this place seemed to have weeded out. We were the one normal family in the bevy of socially engineered freaks.  
  
But nothing lasts forever, and when the storm moved in, the world tagged along. I obviously didn't know it back then, but Valkyr was the force that toppled the deck, and with it my life and my sanity, all of it, down the drain like so much curdled milk.  
  
My first real taste of the real, cruel world had come two years earlier. It was a warm summer night, not long after my fourteenth birthday. The family had been inter-state for a few weeks visiting friends, and were now heading home by the scenic route, avoiding the highways wherever possible.  
  
Ever the attention seeker, I did my usual routine of pretending to fall asleep in the back of the car. I had always loved to listen to my parents discussing how cute I was asleep when they thought I couldn't hear them. This time it backfired, and I told myself I would never do it again. It was a shallow promise, too little, too late.  
  
As I opened my eyes again, I was blinded by the fog lights of the juggernaut which came careering towards us. I gave a blood curdling, gut wrenching scream as the runaway truck showed no sign of stopping. When I saw my fathers smiling face I was convinced it was all a bad dream. Convinced for about a millisecond, before impact. My world was thrown on its side in the time it takes to empty a syringe. The trailer of the truck had spun around on impact. I saw only the big white letters, clear as moonshine. Everything else was a monochrome blur.  
  
"Aesir Corporation - A Bit Closer to Heaven".  
  
I blacked out. 


End file.
